Although
Beethoven’s Third Symphony is commonly
known as the Eroica,
it was his Second that grew out of
the more heroic predisposition. 1802 saw the birth of the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament, in which Beethoven faced the
tragic prospect of encroaching deafness. Courage had triumphed over mental
strain and the strictures of classical form were already being confronted by
more radical inspirations. Haydn and Mozart are still audible forebears but, at
the final reckoning, gaiety wins out over sorrow and the Symphony emerges as immensely affirmative.

Erich Kleiber’s Berlin State Opera Orchestra set of the Second Symphony was one of the first to
enjoy the benefits of electrical recording techniques and, during the LP era,
was even passed off as the work of Wilhelm Furtwängler
- not surprisingly, perhaps, given the weight and flexibility of Kleiber’s reading. As Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper, Viennese-born Kleiber
had conducted the first performance of Berg’s Wozzeck in 1924 (though not
before 137 rehearsals) and was to make his début with the New York Philharmonic
in 1930, a year after this recording was first issued. 1929 saw the Wall Street
crash, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,
Krenek’sJonnySpielt Auf, Coward’s Bitter Sweet, Bax’sSecond Symphony and Stravinsky’s Capriccio. Any aspiring Beethovenian was operating within a context
of cultural and political change.

Beethoven’s
Second opens to an imposing Adagio molto
introduction. At 0:35, horns that should rightly crescendo (but that do not in this recording) lead to a pensive
alternation between strings and woodwinds. Kleiber
broadens the pace ever so slightly, speeding again when the alternations become
more florid (note how clearly the engineers capture the double-basses, for example
at 1: 15 and beyond). After a forceful gesture from the full orchestra (1:40),
accelerating staccato violins
embellish a secondary theme on lower strings. There are further alternations
and a downward scale on first violins delivers us to a lusty Allegro con brio (2:24) which is here
played rather more slowly than Beethoven’s metronome marking suggests. One of
the most striking passages occurs at 2:57, where mighty sforzandos (forced accents) goad
the violin desks into excited staccatos
(3:03). The cocky second subject breezes in at 3:20 and the development
section, at 4:53 (there is no exposition repeat). Kleiber
intensifies the mood where upper and lower strings angrily answer each other
(5:03) and his animated recapitulation (6:37) heads the movement towards a well
judged coda (8:35).

The Larghetto second movement opens like a gentle
hymn, then brightens for a songful second idea (1:55)
on violins. Classical elegance combines with intimations of a new music,
especially when the mood darkens (at 4:00 - the 78 ‘turnover’ led to a small
cut in the musical line), and flute and bassoon indulge somber exchanges (4:44)
while the strings keep up the pulse. Tension starts to build again at 5:41,
leading to a mighty arch that resolves into elegant decorations and leads us back
to a re-statement of the opening theme. Kleiber is particularly
sensitive in his handling of the coda, with its rising flute line (10:36).

The Scherzo is again taken fairly slowly and
has a sense of the hunt about it. A group of three crotchets is thrown
playfully between strings, woodwinds and full orchestra. Kleiber
halves the tempo for the ruddy-faced Trio
(1:47) - a common practice at the time - then cunningly picks up speed so that
when he returns to the first half, you hardly notice ‘the join’ .The finale
opens to a jagged theme topped by a trill. Perhaps this was the passage that
led a contemporary Leipzig
critic to describe the symphony as “an expiring snake, twisting and bleeding
wildly, striking out furiously in all directions but refusing to die”. A gentle
second idea sets in at 0:24, and by 0:49 the second subject has woodwinds
cavorting with tumbledown violins. At 5:14, there is a key change,
a pause for thought and the music chugs off again until a series of false stops
and starts (typical Beethoven humour) brings the Symphony to a close.

One of the
more unusual features of Kleiber’s Beethoven Second concerns the string playing,
which is comparatively ‘slide-free’ for the late 1920s. By contrast, the German
composer-conductor Hans Pfitzner employs portamento (‘carrying’)
as a more-or-less standard practice, though with Beethoven’s predominantly
lyrical Fourth Symphony, the gesture seems
rather appropriate. Robert Schumann used to call the Fourth (which was a product of 1806) Beethoven’s “Greek Symphony”.
He praised its “tranquillity and classical purity of
form”, not unreasonably, though some conductors - notably Furtwängler
- make a special feature of the first movement’s many contrasts in mood and colour.

Pfitzner
prepared this recording at around the time when he was putting the finishing
touches to his cantata Dasdunkle Reich
and although far from immaculate, technically speaking, it is full of intuitive
insights. Freer in style than Kleiber’sSecond, it is also rather more respectful
of Beethoven’s fast metronome markings.

The Symphony opens to a quiet pizzicato
chord, which in turn leads to a solemn adagio
theme and a hymn-like motif (at 2:11, where Pfitzner’s
strings introduce one or two of those ‘portamento’
slides). So much for the darkness. Light dawns
suddenly, first on crescendoing violins, then on two
affirmative orchestral chords (2:27) and an Allegro
vivace where Pfitzner
immediately starts to push the tempo (2:40). A cheeky bassoon flavours the mix (2:59), the tempo dips for a second idea
(again led by the bassoon, at 3:36), then speeds again as marching crotchets
3:49 deliver us to the second subject (4:07 - clarinet in duet with the
bassoon). The development section (4:47) is eerily quiet. At 5:59 gentle violin
crotchets reflect on that initial, excited ‘darkness to light’ transition to allegro vivace,
alternating with equally quiet timpani (though they are not terribly quiet here)
before leaping back at full force for the recapitulation (from 6:48). This
particular performance is interesting in that while many conductors at the time
slow the development to virtual immobility, Pfitzner keeps
things on the move.

The Adagio second movement opens to quiet second-violin
semiquavers in 3/4 time that switch to clipped staccato triplets as soon as the
first violins take up the first theme cantabile
(or ‘sweetly’). In this recording, however, Pfitzner ‘back-dates’
the staccato effect to the opening bars so that when first fiddles come in with
their theme, the accompaniment is consistent. The idea, one presumes, is to
mark a maximum contrast between a singing top line and its crisp, even
breathless ‘backing’. After a hammering climax, woodwinds take over the theme
and lower strings provide a pizzicato accompaniment. Next comes a noble,
arching motif on the strings (at 1:40) followed by a delicately accompanied
clarinet solo. A little later, at 4:00, violins take the lead with a variation
on the principal theme before string choirs intertwine (5:09). The movement's
closing moments have the horn, clarinet and flute enter into a ‘speaking’
exchange that anticipates the close of the Pastoral
Symphony’s ‘Scene by the Brook’.

Pfitzner’s
“Menuetto” is lively but casual, and openly appreciative
of those weird, curling figurations shared between woodwinds and strings (from
00:03) that seem to anticipate the twilit world of late Brahms. The
folksong-like trio is slowed significantly and the rush back to the opening
idea (2:52) is something of a mess. Beethoven’s Allegro ma non troppo heading for the
finale contradicts a very fast metronome marking, but Pfitzner
sensibly keeps the pace both moderate and flexible so that you can hear, say,
the rocking clarinet accompaniment (at 0:35) and crucial sforzando string figurations
later on. The central section (from 1:38) is full of tiny pauses and speed
alterations, but the return statement of the second idea at 3:23 is beautifully
drawn. And when, towards the end of the piece, Beethoven lulls us into a false
sense of restfulness, Pfitzner keeps the secret and
the vigorous finale bars are shockingly conclusive.

Rob Cowan

Producer’s note

The
hundredth anniversary of Beethoven’s death coincided with the dramatic
improvement in sound recording brought about by the electrical process. A
large-scale edition of Beethoven’s works was launched by English Columbia,
including a complete set of the Symphonies.
At the same time, the German Grammophon label
(exported as Polydor) commenced its own series of the
Beethoven Symphonies. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin State
Opera Orchestra shared the recordings, conducted by Hans Pfitzner,
Richard Strauss, Oscar Fried and Erich Kleiber. This
series, however, was not completed in time for the centennial and, in fact, was
not completed until 1933, with Symphony
No. 8. Naxos is reissuing the complete
set.

Documentation
concerning Grammophon/Polydor recordings is very
sketchy. Exact recording dates are uncertain, matrix numbers are not always an
accurate indicator, and Grammophon was known to
reissue certain recordings in dubbed versions, with new matrix numbers. A ‘mechanical
copyright’ date appears on the original 78s, but this represents the year of
issue, and even this had been known to change when matrices were re-numbered.
Thus, the year of issue is given here rather than the year of recording.